The present invention relates to a computer system and a method for determining the distribution of transportation carrier support that will result in the lowest total travel cost for an organization. More particularly, the invention relates to a computer system and method for developing a model to represent an organization's travel requirements in order to maximize and leverage benefits obtained from individual transportation carriers.
Typically, a larger size organization will tend to purchase a significant amount of travel services from a number of travel carriers. For example, a large corporation having a headquarters office and several far-flung divisional offices, manufacturing plants, and the like may be expected to have its employees and/or representatives travel therebetween as well as to other locations in the ordinary course of business. Such an organization typically negotiates special incentive arrangements with one or more travel carriers in order to obtain a discount for supporting the travel carriers.
Nevertheless, a particular incentive arrangement may actually cost the organization more money than is being saved, for any of several reasons. For example, the organization may take advantage of a particular incentive arrangement by using a particular travel carrier to travel between a location A and a location B. However, in doing so, the organization may have to suffer the fact that the travel carrier does not provide fast and/or frequent service between the two locations.
Alternatively, the travel carrier may not provide added benefits that another travel carrier offers for traveling between the two locations. Still further, in supporting the one carrier, another less costly alternative may be ignored. Inevitably, the lack of an organized travel scheme causes the organization to incur significant additional total travel costs. Thus, it would be highly advantageous to have a system and method for organizing a coherent travel scheme based on the organization's travel demands, the negotiated travel incentives the organization has with particular travel carriers, and the service each travel carrier provides between particular travel locations, as well as several other factors, in order to minimize the total travel cost incurred by the organization.